Our Association

Neuwied-Matara-Friendship-Association was founded in 2005.

The basic idea was to help children in Matara and suburbs, who had lost parents or one parent or their home by the tsunami on December 26th, 2004. They should be enabled to attend school regularly. Those students should be granted a scholarship that helped them in their school education and to pass their final exams. The amount of money was meant to pay hostel fees, school material, books…

So, our association asked for donations to help schoolchildren in Matara. The result of the collection was overwhelming, and we could even build two hostels at Rahula and Sujatha College, where students who had lost their parents and/or their home were meant to stay. This should be a place for them to live and to learn.

Additionally, children from economically weak and needy families should be given a scholarship and thus be given the chance to attend one of those both very good schools and to find a place in one of the new hostels.
After finishing the construction of the two hostels, our association put up a two-storied building with a school hall and five more classrooms at Rohana Special School, a school for deaf, blind and mentally handicapped children. At the same time, a Vocational Center at Rahula College was built, to offer those boys a training for a skilled trade (metal, wood,…) who planned or had to stop their academic education after O/L. The opening ceremony took place in January 2010 in the presence of our Lord Mayor of Neuwied, Mr. Roth.

These four projects being finished successfully, our Friendship Association got into contact with Anura College and Mantinda Temple School – two schools, very different from those we had been in contact with before. We met poverty, economic and social problem areas and cases. Lessons in damaged buildings and very cramped conditions, missing school equipment… attracted our attention and made clear where our help was mostly needed. The first decision in 2010 was to build 3 special classrooms for natural sciences and to offer the necessary equipment at Anura Vidyalaya.

In 2011, it was a Home Science Room with full equipment that was donated to Anura College, followed by a first floor in 2012 with two more big classrooms, one for dance and music, the other one was an English Medium Room. After the completion of these buildings, a small library and reading room was built and donated, with English, Singhalese and Tamil books, a real novelty at this less well-off school, which caused extreme pride and gratitude.
In summer 2015 a first floor will be added on top of that library to offer more space.

If you are interested in seeing and learning more about our projects and in visiting this beautiful island in the Indian Ocean, in admiring its cultural and geographical highlights, there is a way of organizing your journey extensively.
Contact our manager, Mr. Sagara Abegunewardene, phone: 02681-5301 or email: *protected email*

We will go on supporting school projects and scholarships and report continuously.